Chinese Actor Shatters Social Media Records After Apologizing For Cheating On Wife

Wednesday

Apr 2, 2014 at 3:01 PM

Aly Weisman

Chinese actor Wen Zhang is as famous for his movies as he is his family-man image.

Zhang, 29, has been married to Chinese actress Yili Ma, 37, since 2008. The couple have a daughter together and Ma is currently pregnant with their second child.

But Zhang's reputation as a faithful husband was shattered Monday as he took to Weibo — essentially the Twitter of China — to admit, and apologize, for having an affair with Chinese actress Yao Di, his co-star on popular Chinese TV show "Naked Marriage."

"I have brought this upon myself. A mistake is a mistake. This has nothing to do with anyone else," Wen wrote, as translated by The Hollywood Reporter. "Today, I am willing to accept all the consequences. I've let down Ma Yili and our children. My mistake does not deserve to be forgiven, and it will be difficult for me to make amends for all the harm I've caused. But I want to do it. I have to do it. This is what I'll do for the rest of my life."

Within 10 hours, the post had attracted over 2.5 million comments and was retweeted more than 1 million times — both new records for Weibo, according to THR.

To put that into perspective, Ellen DeGeneres' star-studded Oscar selfie has currently been "favorited" nearly 2 million times and retweeted nearly 3.5 million times. Obama's "Four More Years" tweet, which held the previous record, has just 296,000 "favorites" and 780,000 retweets.

Zhang's wife replied on Weibo to her husband's viral post by simply stating, "Being in love is easy, being married is not. It is to be cherished."

Her comment has garnered more than 650,000 retweets and nearly a million comments.